


Clarity

by cvioleta



Series: Perspective [1]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Based upon promo for 3.23, But not anti-Deckerstar, F/M, Mazifer, he loves them both
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 07:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14636850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cvioleta/pseuds/cvioleta
Summary: A split second, a gunshot that goes awry and Lucifer is left with a choice he never expected to have to make.  My take on how the promo for 3.23 could shake out - season end/possibly series end.





	Clarity

It all happens so fast.  He sees and reacts faster than a human and it is still not fast enough. For the first time, it isn’t.

He sees everything at once.  The barrel of Cain’s gun, pointed at him.  Chloe, raising her own, ready to stop him.  He isn’t scared.  Cain’s pointing the gun at him, he doesn’t even _see_ Chloe yet, and it’s no big deal if Lucifer gets shot. He’s already come back from the dead once since he lost his invulnerability around the Detective.  It’s like Cain forgot the _rules_.  But then, Cain was never very good with rules.

Lucifer rolls to the balls of his feet, about to run _at_ Cain and stop this nonsense before any innocent humans get hurt, but then there’s something else in the picture, a blur, dark as the night, and Cain goes down and the gun goes off and Lucifer hears a scream and it’s coming from his own mouth…

It all happens fast and then silence, before Lucifer can even register what he is seeing.  Amenadiel has arrived and, thankfully, slowed time.  The humans stand like mannequins; Chloe with her gun, a horrified look on her face.  She is okay, and he follows her line of sight to see what she’s looking at although he already knows, he just doesn’t _want_ to turn his eyes back that way because he sees no motion out of the corner of his eye and then Amenadiel is coming toward him and he doesn’t want to hear what his brother has to say so he turns back and runs to the figures on the ground instead.

Cain is on top of her where he fell, and Lucifer grabs his shoulder and throws him violently away, harder than necessary, his heavy body slamming into the legs of a table and falling to the ground in a heap, one of Maze’s demon daggers buried so far into his neck that only a tiny sliver of silver is still visible, shining through the sticky red liquid that covers everything. There is so much blood and Lucifer wants to believe it is all Cain’s, even when he sees the hole in Maze’s forehead.   He kneels by her side, pulls her into his arms, ignores the blood that smudges across his own face as he cradles her, his hand in her hair.  It’s as if Amenadiel’s magic worked on demons…she doesn’t move, not a twitch, limp in his arms, the second dagger falling from her hand and clattering on the floor. 

“Luci…”

He hears Amenadiel but doesn’t turn away.  He waits silently, his fingers tangling in her hair, holding her close.  She’s still warm, _surely_ she’ll return.  She’s been with him forever, literally.   _She never stays away for long._   He can hear himself say that, so flippant, so stupidly confident.  He tells himself this is not possible, but he knows what dead looks like.  He has seen enough of it.

“This can’t be,” he hears himself saying.  Shaky, nothing like himself. If he thought he was having a nervous breakdown a few days ago, it is nothing to what he is feeling right now.  When Amenadiel speaks, he too sounds broken, but he stays standing.

“He forged the bullets from the flaming sword. He meant to eradicate you.”

Lucifer finally looks up at that.  “I _destroyed_ that!”

“No. You threw it after Mom and she found the pieces and used them to return. It was back on Earth.”

It all crashes down on him then, and for one weird moment he thinks of the victims of the Pompeii volcano, buried by a lake of fire, frozen for all eternity with the stunned looks on their faces.  He doesn’t cry.  This is too bad for tears.  His heart is like a stone in his chest and he feels sick as it all falls into place.  He might as well have handed Cain the weapon himself.  And Maze should not even have been here. She had begged him to take her home.  _Begged_ , and she was not the begging kind. He can’t think of another time she’d ever begged for anything, not in all the eons they’d been together.  He had refused.  He’d told her it was because of his fear of celestial consequences and retribution.  The truth was no matter how bad things were between them, he could not bear the thought of not having her around.  She had been there for so long he didn’t know how to live without her, couldn’t imagine her absence for long. 

And even when she was angry at him, even when her dark eyes snapped with irritation and her rage was unmistakable, even when she was so frustrated that she knew no other way to express it other than with her fists, he knew she would always protect him.  She –

“She knew,” he says, more of a statement than a question.

Amenadiel clears his throat, but his voice still comes out no more than a hoarse whisper.  “She’s the one who warned me.”

Lucifer turns to look at his brother.  “You have to take me to Dad. You can get past the gates. You have to take me.”

Amenadiel just looks at him, sad.  As if he should understand something that he doesn’t, but right now the only thing Lucifer understands is that Mazikeen is _gone_ and that can’t be.  He can’t process anything else, although he can feel lurking in the back of his mind a hundred things he said to her that were the wrong things and somehow at the time he didn’t know they were the wrong things, but they will have to wait because right now there is only the knowledge that she doesn’t _exist_ anymore, and it is all his fault because she would never have been on this wretched planet except for him, on this wretched planet taking a celestial bullet for him…

He snaps his head to the left, looking for the gun, but Amenadiel has already retrieved it.  Lucifer growls in frustration, knowing he cannot best his brother in a fight.  He just wants to go where she went. If that’s into the void, so be it.  He can’t bear the weight of an apology he can no longer give.  It is all very clear now.  She did the right thing in the end no matter how many times he did the wrong thing, and Lucifer can’t stand it.  He knows now, with absolute clarity, why Mazikeen was so successful in torturing the souls using their own guilt against them.

“Take her then.  Take her to Dad, tell him I’ll do as he says.  I’ll go back to Hell and I’ll stay there.”

“Luci, he has no more way to restore her than you or I do.  You know she doesn’t have a soul.”

“I don’t believe that!” Lucifer growls at his brother.  “He _invented_ souls.  He’s all powerful. He can do it if he wants to!”

“If you go back to Hell, you can’t take Chloe.  She has done nothing to deserve that,” Amenadiel reminds him. 

Lucifer has never had to choose before. Maze, as upset as she was, had never forced him to choose. He wasn’t sure if she’d been afraid of his answer, or if she simply viewed Chloe as a temporary disruption that would inevitably, because of her mortality, be resolved with the passage of time. 

He had chosen, so many times, to not know.  To not ask.  To avoid.  To tell himself that demons didn’t have feelings, that a vow of fealty was not love. Even when he knew better.

Part of him wanted humanity so badly, so badly that he’d blinded himself to reason.  That part wanted nothing more than to help Trixie with her homework and Chloe with her cases, to mow the grass and celebrate holidays and play at being human.  It was warm and comfortable, the family he’d never had and never would have, something he had never thought he needed until he was around it and suddenly he felt like there was a way to fill up the holes in his soul, had hope that he could be something more than the black sheep of a family, the reject.  Chloe and Trixie loved him and accepted him despite his flaws, and he was eternally filled with wonder at it, that two souls so pure and good could accept him.  Even love him.   

But playing human didn’t make him human.  He wouldn’t be able to stay with them long because someone would notice that he didn’t age.  And Chloe was the kind of woman who wanted 100 percent of someone; if that wasn’t true she’d still be with Dan, who could not help but put his work above his family at times.  Lucifer loved her, but how was he any different?  His role in the universe was so great, and so unavoidable, despite his best efforts, and it had endangered her too many times to count. 

He chose not to see it.  He didn’t want to see it.   

He’d wanted to have it all, he hadn’t _wanted_ to make a choice, and so he had only succeeded in hurting everyone he loved. 

Some worse than others. 

He buries his face in Maze’s hair, wishing for all the world that she would snap awake and say something sarcastic to him, ask him when he became a cuddler.  But she is still, quieter than he’s even seen her, even in sleep, and he’d shared a bed with her for millennia. 

“I’ll go alone.”  Lucifer stands up slowly, cradling Maze in his arms.  “Please.  Take her and go now.  Make it happen, Amenadiel.”  His voice is low and desperate, and it wounds Amenadiel to the core. _Why couldn’t he have been faster?_  He has a soft spot for Maze himself and he _hates_ this day, _hates_ this outcome.

He looks around at the frozen humans, knowing that he will have to come back here, will have to blur their memories, to erase this entire fucked-up episode from their lives.  He will watch over Chloe and Trixie, Linda and Dan and Ella, until the day they come to the Silver City.  They will be special and _protected_ as he knows Lucifer would want.

“I’ll do my best. You know I will.”  He reaches out his arms and takes Maze from Lucifer, watching his brother visibly cringe as he let her go.  He too, feels the stillness of her like a knife in his chest. Maze was _never_ still. 

Amenadiel looks at Lucifer, wondering if he will ever see him again, praying silently that their father accedes to his brother’s request, before he walks out the door into the bright sunlight and takes flight. Lucifer is right behind him and then he’s not.  The last thing Lucifer sees of Earth is Chloe running out the door, gun in hand, looking around and looking up, but the sun is in her eyes, blinding her, and she sees nothing.  He turns his head back into the wind, tears stinging his eyes, and flies onward.

 


End file.
